Now in his 30th year of delivering Tanglewood pre-concert lectures at Lenox Library, Yudkin treated the crowd to a boatload of fascinating but little-known details about three famous pieces of music and the men who created them.
Although one must be wary of the word “definitive” when describing any musical performance, overenthusiastic critics (there are a few) must be forgiven if they use such language to describe the orchestra’s widely praised Shostakovitch performances.
It’s safe to say that if these quintets are not major pinnacles of chamber music, then Beethoven was a Saint Bernard, and Schubert is a frozen dessert.
Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Winds and String Instruments (1878) evokes the 18th century, late-baroque, tradition of outdoor performances on the grounds of the nobility’s castles for the amusement of both the aristocracy and its serfs.
When you witness a performance by musicians of this caliber, you are seeing the result not only of innate musical talent but also about ten thousand hours of practice that each musician must invest before reaching this level of virtuosity.
The real sensation of the afternoon was the young violinist Benjamin Beilman, whose sound has all the natural projection and power of a premier concert-soloist. In fact, I would have been happy to have seen Mr. Beilman replace most any of the underwhelming cohort of violin soloists this year at Tanglewood.
